The pilots’ demeanor was as cool as the January weather, according to cockpit voice recordings released yesterday at a Washington hearing held by the National Transportation Safety Board to look into the problem of bird-plane collisions.

Sullenberger and Skiles skillfully brought their US Airways Airbus A320 down onto the river, saving all aboard after both of its engines were taken out by Canada geese.

It had been a normal takeoff from La Guardia Airport, and in the pilots’ only extraneous airborne exchange, Sullenberger admired the scenery.

Though he and Skiles sounded calm, Sullenberger said yesterday he grasped the seriousness of the bird strike. “If you think I wasn’t startled, you misunderstood,” he told the NTSB panel.

Skiles, an experienced pilot who was new to the A320, handled the jet on takeoff. But when crisis struck, Sullenberger took over.

“My aircraft,” he commanded.

With both engines knocked out, Skiles — unprompted by Sullenberger — pulled out the plane’s quick reference handbook and began running down emergency checklists.

Weighing his landing options, Sullenberger decided against returning to La Guardia. “I couldn’t afford to be wrong,” he said. “Once I turned toward La Guardia, it would have been an irreversible choice.”

At the back of the passenger cabin, Billy Campbell of Woodland Hills, Calif., saw that the engine outside his window was “almost a bonfire.”

Campbell, who also testified yesterday, was the last passenger off the plane. Once he got onto the life raft, he said he grabbed Sullenberger by the arm and told him: “You saved my life. You saved all of our lives.”

Scientists believe the Canada geese that struck Flight 1549 were migratory, and not among the goose flocks that live around the city year-round.

The Flight 1549 incident was “somewhat atypical” because it happened at about 2,800 feet in the air three or four miles from La Guardia, said Richard Dolbeer, a Department of Agriculture bird expert.

Most bird strikes happen “right near or on the airport” — and strikes with migratory birds are very rare in January, when most birds are settled in their winter habitats, Dolbeer said.

The Flight 1549 pilots got no warning about birds in the area. But even if they had, Sullenberger said such warnings are usually “general in nature and not specific and therefore have limited usefulness.”

Aside from controlling bird populations near airports, Dolbeer and other experts said they were not sure what to do about the problem.

One idea is bird-detection radar, already in use at military bases. Dolbeer said it’s not clear how much the radar would help at busier civilian airports. “It’s certainly something that can help as a tool to mitigate strikes,” he said.